Everything To Play For In Last Round

Wellington Premier Rugby players and coaches left their rugby balls on the training paddocks this week in favour of calculators, instead plotting their chances of making next week's semi-finals.

It's tight across both the Jubilee Cup and Hardham Cup competitions going into this weekend's last round sets of matches, with five Jubilee Cup and four Hardham Cup teams chasing the remaining three playoff places still up for grabs in each competition.

The scenario is similar on both points tables, with Marist St. Pat's already confirmed as top qualifier in the Jubilee Cup and Oriental-Rongotai in the Hardham Cup. Both will host semi-finals, win, lose or draw this weekend. Below those leading sides it's a tense situation for all playoff contenders, whose playoff fortunes won't be known until Saturday's final whistle. Particularly so for all four sides chasing the three semi-final positions in the Hardham Cup. Wainuiomata, Upper Hutt, Avalon and Johnsonville are all clustered within a point of each other behind Ories, making for a knife-edge last round.

The Polo Ground will again be the centre of attention, where Johnsonville find themselves needing to topple Ories to guarantee their playoff spot and promotion back up to the Swindale Shield in 2008. If not they will be left relying on a major upset in the other three matches, all involving the Premier clubs against B teams. Wainuiomata travel to Kilbirnie to play Poneke, Upper Hutt host Northern United at Maidstone and Avalon welcome MSP to Fraser Park.
Of these three, Avalon will be the most anxious, being a point behind the others and having lost to Johnsonville in round five - with a whom-beat-whom scenario if two or more teams finish on level pegging.

The situation is no less edgy in the Jubilee Cup, with Northern United and Hutt Old Boys Marist favoured to stay inside the top four, leaving current fourth placed Petone in the hot seat with both Tawa and Old Boys-University breathing down their necks.

Three out of four of this weekend's games will have a direct influence on the playoff fortunes of the other contenders, with six points separating second placed Norths and sixth placed OBU, with the rights to host the second home semi-final also still up in the air. Accordingly, the Wests Roosters versus Poneke at Ian Galloway Park is the only meaningless contest.

It could get exciting at Porirua Park, both Norths and Tawa hoping for bonus point wins - Norths to finish second and guarantee a fourth consecutive home semi-final next week, and Tawa to give themselves every chance of snatching the last spot. At the Hutt Recreation ground, OBU's task is tougher, the students needing to beat Hutt Old Boys Marist with a bonus point and rely on Norths beating Tawa and MSP defeating Petone at the Petone Recreation Ground, the scene of this week's Club Weekly game. The Villagers will be determined against the top qualifiers though, hoping to bounce back from last week's last-gasp 15-7 loss to HOBM.